


Seven Times the Doctor Met the Endless

by baffledking



Category: Doctor Who, The Sandman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-27
Updated: 2007-01-27
Packaged: 2017-10-26 07:38:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/280461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baffledking/pseuds/baffledking





	Seven Times the Doctor Met the Endless

He was young even as humans counted years when he walked a winding path with a dark robed man with a book. It had taken him longer than he wished to get here and he wasn’t sure he even really _was_ here. People, even Timelords, didn’t reach Destiny’s gardens with ease. They walked for days, weeks, side by side, Thete babbling and cajoling, trying to get the pale, hooded figure to open the book he was chained to. They never passed the same path twice and Thete never saw more than one set of footprints.

Destiny finally spoke. “It’s time for you to return, Doctor. You have more things to see than a garden can show you.”

 

He was older the first time he met Destiny’s younger sister. It was rare to see a Timelord die in truth and he was nearly a century of his own time away from his planet and nearly an aeon in truth the first time he felt a soft hand on his shoulder like a brand.

“It’s too soon.” He didn’t turn to face her, holding the body close to him. Body. It was only a body now, not a woman who had laughed with him in the decades before Susan found him.

“There’s never a too soon, Doctor,” she said in a voice that sounded like his home. “She had what everyone has. A lifetime. No more, no less. Even time travelers know that.”

“It’s not fair,” and he knew what a child he sounded like, in that first incarnation when everything hurt so much.

“It is what it is.”

And he said goodbye.

 

The Doctor didn’t sleep often.

A dreamer with the power to change the world was rare in the realm of dreams and both welcome and feared.

He walked on a seashore that never was, scattered fragments of realities crashing on the rough sand and broken shells of dreams that would never be realized. A dark figure came into pace with him and they both stopped silently, in perfect accord, looking up into the black, starless sky and watched the explosion of a planet that never existed except in the imagination of a young boy who couldn’t hear the cries of the people who's world it had been.

The King of Dreams and the Lonely God watched the ash fall and mourned in their own ways.

 

In fairness to his skills of observation he’d always been somewhat trouble-attracting. He just didn’t realize that had been _literal_ until the tall, red haired man who’d been traveling in the Tardis with him for the last month kissed him affectionately. The Doctor tilted his head, examining the taste in his mouth the quick application of the other man’s tongue had left (what constituted an affectionate greeting varied by planet and this wasn’t the first time he’d had a tongue in his mouth before quite realizing how it had gotten there. And it was far better than a hand in his pants). Des had gone to the console, beginning a new flight plan and managing not to explode anything this time before the Doctor had pointed a finger straight up in a moment of pure eureka, recognizing the taste of Time.

“You could have _said_ ,” he pointed out just a bit plaintively.

 

He knew Despair. He’d met her eyes through a hundred mirrors on a hundred worlds. It was only after…

After.

It was only after that he felt her enfold him in her fleshy arms and he cried against her grey, cold shoulder like a child and felt the warmth leeching out of him and into her, as he only grew thinner, further from the man he had been.

He pulled himself from her like a rejecting lover and hid in a thousand petty squabbles through time and tried to tell himself he wasn’t seeking her oldest sister.

 

Desire was the sibling he saw least, flirting at the corner of his eye, always flirting and never straight on. That was Desire though and he understood that it was not for him. He loved without wanting and finally it frustrated the Endless twin enough that he/she/it/they sat down beside him at a bar, watching Rose and Jack dance, the stars twinkling above them.

“I could make you want them.” Desire said finally, “I could make you want.”

“But then I’ll have won, won’t I?” The Doctor sipped the drink he didn’t need, didn’t make his bones ache like Desire wanted it to. “And it won’t do you any good.”

“They are beautiful though.” Desire pointed out.

“They’re human.” The Doctor agreed. “What they look like has nothing to do with how beautiful they are.”

 

When they were both young he danced in a garden with a beautiful girl who made the world seem brighter just by being. Delight and he was _joyous_ to have known her. He played a song on his flute for her and she created butterflies from the notes.

The next time he saw the youngest of the Endless she was older, but then, so was he. She sat on his chest, peering mismatched eyes into his as he struggled to remember what he was. Who he was and how to work this new body. The weight of her was too much and he couldn’t levitate with Delirium sapping his attention.

”I missed you.” She said warmly, “But I watch sometimes. I’ll be here, you know. Each time you change and need me.”


End file.
